


Friendship Straw

by Cosmic_Biscuit



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Mind Control, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 17:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3142664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Biscuit/pseuds/Cosmic_Biscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The silly straw incident that made Mabel into Bill's favorite Pines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friendship Straw

**Author's Note:**

> Set before 'Sock Opera'.

The problem with keeping constant watch on your enemy was that you had to pay attention to _everything_ they did. And so much of Pine Tree’s free time that didn’t involve his sister or the journal was so… very… _boring_. Bill could only suffer through so many cheesy mystery novels and awkward socialization -though admittedly, the latter made for _some_ laughs, especially the dreams about the red-headed girl. It had been a shame when he’d stopped having those as often- without going snoozeville.

Putting a sort of ‘journal alert’ spell on the kid’s brain had been a stroke of genius that finally saved him from the tedium. He had to give humanity a round of applause for that little burst of inspiration, he had to admit. Mortal obsession of tracking information through technology was actually a pretty good idea. And it gave him the freedom to pay attention to more entertaining things.

Namely, said sister.

Shooting Star; now _there_ was a fleshbag who knew how to have _fun_. Even if she didn’t yet understand or appreciate the value of pain in a prank, her antics provided enough amusement value to keep his surveillance from getting too stale to keep up.

After one last check to make sure his spell was holding, Bill floated down from the attic, humming to himself as he sought out his quarry. He found the twin in question hunched over a book in the gift shop, practically head to head with the handyman as they poured over the entries.

"World’s longest game of crack the whip, no. World’s biggest pizza puff, _no_. Ugh, all of these sound _dumb_.”

"I could totally go for that world’s biggest pizza puff, though."

“ _Agh_ , there’s gotta be _something_ in here-” Shooting Star huffed as she started skimming pages faster. Bill peered over her shoulder to get a peek at what had their interest piqued.

_Ooh_ , world records. Humans doing insane things for a blip note of glory was _always_ good for a chuckle.

"Wait! This one! This one, _this one!_ It’s _perfect!_ ” Shooting Star suddenly stopped her page-flipping, stabbing her finger at a caption under a photo. “World’s longest working silly straw!”

"Hey, yeah! I bet we could totally beat that one, dude.”

Silly… straw?

Bill squinted at the tiny picture, then used a twinge of power to ‘magnify’ the mindscape copy of it. At the sight of a small human sitting on a very high tree branch to drink from a bottle on the ground through a series of loops and twists and whirls, he started to feel the odd little itch of excitement he got in the very tip of his ‘head’ whenever Shooting Star had come up with a particularly ~~chaotic~~ _brilliant_ idea.

_Oh._

Oh, this was going to be _fun_.

"Dipper! _Dippeeeeeerrr!_ Bro-Bro!"

Shooting Star bounded ahead of him back up to the attic, somehow managing to take the stairs three at a time despite her short legs. Without even stopping to catch her balance, she barreled through the door of the twins' bedroom and leaped onto her brother's bed with enough force to nearly bounce him off it.

" _Augh! Mabel_ , what do you _want?_ " Pine Tree yelped as his bowl of chips was scattered in all directions and he held up his book like a shield. "They were just about to reveal who destroyed the Iron Pegasus!"

"No time for winged horses, Dip, I need that bag of silly straws we hid under the Blazing Eye statue, and you know it takes both of us to get it."

Unseen and unheard, Bill couldn't help but cackle. The Blazing Eye? That cheap knockoff basketball thing of him? As if he needed more proof that this was the perfect project!

Pine Tree made a face and started picking up chips, tossing them back in the bowl. "What do you want the whole bag for? I thought we were rationing those or whatever."

"Yeah, but then Soos and I found _this!_ " Shooting Star said, thrusting the records book under her brother's nose. "Looks awesome, huh? _Huh?_ "

_'Yes, it_ does _look awesome,'_ Bill prompted, trying to influence the kid's mind a little. _'You want to let her do this. Heck, go for broke, join in. C'mooooon.'_

"Hmmm... that _is_ kinda neat. Okay, I'll get the straws. Then you let me finish my book without interruptions, and I'll come help _after_ that, deal?"

"Deal!"

_Yes!_

Practically giddy, Bill floated in loops after the pair as they raced each other to the statue in the gift shop, hovering over their heads as they hefted the paper-mache, wire and plastic "demon" to grab a shopping bag of brightly-colored straws that had been stuffed into the cache underneath its base alongside entities -and he- only knew what the old man had collected.

"Thanks, Dip. Me an' Soos'll be in the back yard whenever you get done!"

\------------

The actual idea may have been amazing, but the execution was turning out to be less so. Since he had no way to physically interfere, all Bill could do was nudge ideas into the pair's heads as they worked, and that was proving easier said than done at the moment with them awake and concentrating.

Still, he wasn't about to give up. This was going to be his project, too, even if it took a little more pushing than originally intended.

He prodded at Question Mark's brain first. _'It would look sillier if you put the connected the purple-striped one to the yellow swirly one,'_ he willed with harder force than before, masking his 'voice' as Question Mark's own, and pumped his fist in victory when the handyman obligingly twisted the two together with a grin. Okay, now for the big target.

_'You need more funny shapes,'_ he urged Shooting Star with the same trick. _'What's the point of it being the world's longest if it's not the world's silliest, too?'_

"Hey, yeah," Shooting Star murmured to herself as she inspected the straws they still had to work with. "We can do better than this."

"Do better than what?" Pine Tree asked as he came down from the back porch, and Shooting Star held up a pink straw tied up like a rabbit.

"We're gonna need a _lot_ more straws to break the record, and I think we should make our own shapes with the new ones. These are cute, but we could totally do funnier ones, don't you think?"

"Hmmmnh, maybe? I dunno." Pine Tree said as he took the straw and examined it. "I mean we could probably make some big shapes with multiple straws, but these are formed, not twisted. If we try twisting shapes, we might ruin the overall straw."

_Drat._ The little wet blanket meat sack had a point. But Bill was not about to be deterred. _'There's gotta be_ something _we can do,'_ he prodded, 'poking' at Shooting Star's head for emphasis. _'Magic!  Magic solves everything!'_

Shooting Star scrunched up her face in thought, chewing at her lip, then snapped her fingers. "Hey, hey! I got it! What about that spell-potion-dealy on one of the journal's new pages? The one that makes perfect topiary animals? You think it might work on straws as well as bushes?"

"Huh. Well, we could at least give it a try, I guess. I mean, it seems like a pretty harmless potion," Pine Tree agreed, and got up to go fetch the book.

_'Good girl,'_ Bill thought, 'patting' Shooting Star on the head for her ingenuity. Heck, he didn't even mind that that stupid book was going to be both in and out of his reach all day. If this worked, the payoff would be totally worth the minor irritation. Shrinking himself down, he settled on the girl's shoulder, hanging on to the neck of her sweater for stability as her brother came running back out with the book under his arm and one of the kitchen mixing bowls in his other hand.

"Okay." All three humans peered over the book, Bill with them. "According to this, we need a small piece of one of those shrinking crystals, water, sand from Gravity Falls Lake, pine tree sap, baking soda, and...  the petals and roots of whatever these flowers are."

"Ooh, I've seen those," Shooting Star said. "They don't grow too far from where we found the journal. Do they have to be a specific color, or just that shape?"

"I think just the shape. I can get the shrinking crystal."

"And I'll get the sand," Question Mark said. "And some more bags of straws."

\-----------

He’d been riding on Shooting Star’s shoulder the whole way into the forest. Thankfully, she’d stopped singing those painful overly-processed pop songs a ways back and had switched to just humming or singing whatever nonsense came into her head at the moment. Muuuuuch better.

When they arrived at the spot she’d indicated and she began pulling up the tough little flowers, he hopped off her shoulder to look around. Not much had changed since the last time he’d been there, except for overgrowth and rust. Pfft. If the old nerd could see what his work had come to. It’d be funny. He had time for that later, though. He had all the time in the universe these days.

He laughed at his own joke, then turned his attention back to the human he’d accompanied. Shooting Star was surprisingly fast when she got her head into the game. Just in the time he’d been thinking, she’d ripped up a sizeable number of flowers and was diligently working at separating the petals and roots from the stems, still humming under her breath.

Hm.

He’d considered Pine Tree the better twin to control out of the boy’s sheer drive to dig up secrets; maybe he’d been a bit off the mark. Someone with a similar focus, yet a sense of humor comparable to his own might be more-

“Whew!”

Shooting Star shook herself and stood up, wiping her hands on her skirt, and that broke his train of thought. Meh, world ending stuff later, silly straws now, he decided, floating back over to reclaim his spot on her shoulder as she gathered up the results of her labor and tucked them into the pockets of her sweater.

\-----------

“All right. If we mixed this stuff up right, all we should have to do is dunk a straw in and think of a shape, and the potion will do the rest.” The four of them were staring into a bubbling bowl of purple-clear liquid, straws in all colors and combinations possible at the ready. “Soooo, who wants to try it first?”

“Me!” Without hesitation, Shooting Star grabbed a purple straw with pink swirls on it and stuck it into the bowl. All except Bill covered their eyes as there was a flash and a hissing noise like something being melted in acid, then she tentatively pulled the straw back-

-and squealed in delight at the shape of the pig that was always following her around the shack. “Eeeee! I got a Waddles Straw!”

“Cool, let me try!” Question Mark grabbed a red straw and a yellow straw, dunking in both before either of the kids could stop him. When he pulled his hand back, they’d formed into a single long straw with two shapes in it. “Hey, look, it’s Mr. Pines! And a pizza slice!”

Laughing, Pine Tree selected a green straw and put it in the liquid, then his expression immediately soured when he took it out. “Aw, man,” the kid mumbled, staring at the head of the red-haired girl.

Luckily, Shooting Star intervened before her brother could get too morose about his lost crush. “Hey, wait, you know what this means? We could make straws of everybody in town! Then I bet people would want to come see us break the record! This is awesome!”

Pine Tree perked up at that. “And then Grunkle Stan can’t get mad at us for making a mess ‘cause he’ll want to sell tickets.”

“Yeah!”

Mood salvaged, the three went at the potion with gusto, taking advantage of the fusion abilities in it to bind the straws together magically as they shaped them. It was entertaining to watch, but as the pile of unused straws grew smaller, Bill began to get frustrated.

_‘Make one of me!’_ he pushed at Shooting Star’s brain. _‘I want a straw, too! You made one of a_ gnome _, of all things, I should get one!’_

“Hm…” The girl hesitated, hand hovering over a black straw. The other two had taken a pile of the finished straws and gone to start joining them together into the finished product, so Bill pushed harder.

_‘C’mon. One little straw me. It’s not even a summons, it won’t hurt anything.’_

Shooting Star clenched her fingers a little and wrinkled her nose, then snatched up the straw and stuck it into the bowl, pulling out a little plastic Bill Cipher.

_‘Woohoo!’_

Frowning, Shooting Star squinted at the straw and, for a second, it looked like she might try putting it back into the bowl again. Maybe he’d been a bit too loud with that excitement. But before Bill had to push her to stop, she shook her head and just shoved the straw into the finished pile. Pleased, he patted her head again as she grabbed the rest of the unused straws to get back into her work rhythm.

\----------

For the rest of the afternoon the trio worked while he was content to watch, and by the time the sun was going down, Stan returned from his tours to nearly trip over a silly straw that extended the entire length of the ground floor and back again. “What the-”

“Hey, Grunkle Stan. We’re going for a world record.”

“World record? In _what_ , absurd knot tying? Destroying the living room?”

“No, longest working silly straw! Look, here’s the part with your face in it.”

“Heh. Not a bad likeness,” the old man said, admiring the red straw shaped like his head and fez, and Bill rolled his eye. “So what’s the big deal with this?”

“We’re gonna finish it tomorrow and test it out. If it works, we’re gonna call the records people to officiate setting the record.”

“Records people? Like, what, actual awards?” All three straw-builders nodded and Stan put a hand to his chin, getting the spark in his eye that usually arrived with a devious scheme. “You, uh, wouldn’t happen to need an audience to go with that, would ya?”

Pine Tree and Shooting Star grinned and elbowed each other, trying hard not to laugh. Bill didn’t even bother, cackling at the old man’s predictability. “It _would_ be kinda fun to show it off,” Pine Tree said, smile still wide. “You planning on inviting some people?”

“Inviting nothing. World records are perfect for suckering money out of rubes! Everybody loves a winning oddity. Lemme know when you kids are finished and I’ll get tickets printed up.”

“Yessir!” the trio said with matching salutes, then exchanged high fives when Stan had left the room.

“Told you it would work!”

“Nice going, dudes,” Question Mark said, then looked at the clock. “Uh-oh. I better get going, though. Grandma’s hair won’t highlight itself, you know.”

“It’s cool, Soos. We can get back to work in the morning.”

“Right. Later, dudes!”

After their third had gone, the twins finished attaching a couple of last straws before heading up to their room, Bill right behind them. Hovering at the door, he watched Pine Tree for a minute, waiting to see if the boy was going to start going into ‘Journal Mode’, but the kid merely stripped off his vest and shoes before flopping into bed. Satisfied that this wasn’t going to be a night of mystery hunting, Bill shrunk himself back down to shoulder-size and floated over to Shooting Star’s pillow, waiting until she’d stretched out and called her pig up to her side before making himself comfortable next to her head.

“You think people will really come see us break this record, Mabel?”

“Sure they will. We’re breaking a record _with their faces!_ What could be more flattering than that?”

Pine Tree snorted, but he was smiling as he pulled up his covers. Shooting Star snuggled down into her own, and Bill watched them both as they settled in, the rise and fall of their breathing eventually slowing down and evening out. Once even the pig was asleep, he rubbed his hands together. Now to find his own relaxing spot.

Shooting Star’s mindscape wasn’t anything like the grey mazes of her brother and great uncle’s. Instead, Bill found himself in a _forest_ of towering silly straws and bright colors. The ground was knit together with glittery yarn and shiny ribbons, and kittens slept in bushes made of cotton candy.

It was almost _too_ bright.

Almost.

With a wave of his hand, Bill conjured up a hammock made out of the ribbons and magically stretched it between two little groves of silly straw trees. A couple of kittens raised their heads as he floated by, but didn’t bother him, and he sank comfortably into ‘bed’, a pillow of marshmallow forming under his ‘head’ as he removed his hat.

\----------

Shooting Star bounced awake with vigor, her sudden consciousness flinging him out of her mindscape with enough force to make him dizzy. He didn’t have the chance to get mad, however, before she was physically doing the same to her brother, dragging him half asleep and protesting with the sun barely up.

Ooh, right, time to finish the straw.

Bill brightened up and dusted off his hat, plopping it back to his head, then blipped to where the twins had already gotten back into the swing of putting straw ends together. He was just about to light on the back of Stan’s favorite chair when Pine Tree picked up the black straw shaped like him.

“Hey… Mabel?”

“Yeah?” Shooting Star asked without looking up from her work, then raised her head when Pine Tree tapped it with the straw. “What?”

“Where did _this_ one come from?”

Shooting Star tilted her head, a puzzled look crossing her face, and Bill leaned forward in his seat, focusing intently. “You know, I don’t know. I don’t remember making that one, do you?”

“Heck, no!”

_‘Don’t throw it away, don’t throw it away, it’s_ mine _, don’t you dare,’_ Bill willed.

“Maybe Soos made it? I mean, he was there with us that time, and we’ve got a bunch of other weird ones from our outings, too.”

“Maybe…” Pine Tree said uncertainly. “I don’t think we should keep it, though.”

_‘No!’_

“It’s not him, though, right? It’s just a straw. And we need all the straws we can get right now, creepy or not.”

“I guess,” Pine Tree conceded. “It just… weirds me out. What if it can summon him or something?”

“I don’t think Gideon would have needed all those candles and junk if it were that easy, bro-bro. Though, hey, if it makes you feel better, we could always burn it after we break the record,” Shooting Star said, patting her twin on the shoulder. Bill scowled at the suggestion, but it seemed to cheer up her sibling.

“Yeah, that’s true. Okay, then,” he said, and connected the straw in, followed by a purple pony.

Bill watched as they added the last several straws, still unhappy. He was not going to let them burn his straw. He’d just have to make it disappear somehow once the dismantling process had started. That should be easy enough, body or no body.

And, hey. It would be good practice for his future plans.

\----------

“Okay, Soos, go for it!”

“You can do it, Soos!”

The finished straw wrapped around the entire Shack twice before reaching up to the roof, where Question Mark sat with one end held between his hands. Down on the porch steps, the twins held a bucket that had been filled with four full-sized bottles of soda. The handyman took several deep breaths, then began to suck at the straw with all his might.

For an uncomfortable, few seconds, nothing happened.

Then, slowly, soda began to travel up the combined straws.

_“Yes!”_ Both twins cheered, and Bill with them.

“Keep it up, Soos!” Shooting Star called. “You got this!”

Red in the face, Question Mark wheezed a quick breath before continuing. He had to do so several more times, and the bucket emptied out, but after what seemed like an eternity’s wait -and Bill would know- the man finally took a huge gulp of soda and held up the end of the straw in triumph.

“Aw, yeah! Soos! Soos! Soos! Soos!”

“It works! Hey, Grunkle Stan, we did it!”

“Great! Ring up the press, I’m gonna start selling tickets for the show!”

\----------

While he was sure that the goodwill the family had built up from beating Gideon had brought some viewers, Bill was pretty sure Shooting Star was on the mark with her prediction that most of their audience had bought tickets to see their own faces be immortalized in silly straw form. Noises of excitement could be heard all around the Shack as one person or another found their face and snapped pictures -for ten bucks a pop, of course. The old man was at the top of his game, today.

Seated on Shooting Star’s shoulder, Bill watched the barely organized chaos with glee, pleased that their little project had spiraled into such a big deal. Even though she couldn’t feel it, he tugged approvingly at his ‘partner’s’ hair. She’d done a good job of getting this ball rolling, even if she’d needed a little of his help. He was pretty impressed with her, for a meatsack.

Of course, now the main event was getting ready to start. Question Mark had taken his place back on the roof, and the cameras were focused.

Three.

Two.

One.

Showtime.

Bill had been very careful to set the stage in his own way. A few well-placed nightmares in the minds of every supernatural creature within a three mile radius had ensured that nothing would be interfering with their moment of fame. A couple of rips in the fabric of reality would keep any time warps from affecting the area around the Shack. All that had to go right was the straws and the human element.

Which meant everything could still go wrong, of course.

 

Fortunately, Question Mark hadn’t worn himself, nor the straws out with the practice attempt. And this time, they’d gotten even more soda and a bigger bucket to make sure there wouldn’t be too much air in the straws.

“Go! Go! Go! Go!” the crowd cheered as the soda inched its way through straw after straw.

Around the house once.

Around the house twice.

Back up the front porch, and....

_“Yeeeeeeaaaah!”_ the audience roared, cameras flashing as Question Mark threw his hands up, just as he’d done in the practice session. Whooping, the twins ran up to high five him as he came down from the porch roof, Shooting Star nearly losing her ‘passenger’ in the process. In the crowd, Stan could be heard laughing as he collected winning bets.

Official-looking people in suits with badges and cameras approached the trio, but Bill wasn’t paying much attention to what they were saying. Instead, he watched the cameras, another idea forming in his head. As the record-winners gathered together for their book photo, Bill buffed his hat, then floated up in place of one of Shooting Star’s earrings and brightened himself up a bit. After all, cameras _were_ the window to the soul, and he deserved _some_ credit for this. Only fair he got to be in the official picture, too.

\----------

When the crowds were gone and the euphoria of becoming legends had worn off, the twins and Question Mark began taking apart the giant straw. Remembering what they’d planned to do to his, Bill floated off from the trio to find it, and started laughing when he found it just under the window that also resembled him.

Now, how to get it?

A snort from below made him look down to find Shooting Star’s pig snuffling around one of the bushes by the Shack.

Hm… a good possibility, but no. He’d never been all that fond of possessing animals. Their mindscapes were too boring. Plus, if he remembered right, pigs couldn’t fly. Or climb ladders.

No, better to stick with an option he already knew worked, he decided, and went to find Shooting Star.

She was sitting on Question Mark’s shoulders, the pair of them having finished demolishing a string of straws draped over a window roof. _‘Hey! Go work on the straws by the west window!’_ Bill prodded. _‘They’re important!’_

After she’d hopped down, Shooting Star dusted herself off. “Think you can finish up here, Soos? I’m gonna start on another section.”

“No problemo, hambone. Where should we be putting these?”

“I guess just in the soda bucket for now. We can figure out what to do with them later.”

“Sure.”

Following after Shooting Star, Bill kept ‘nudging’ at her mind as she went inside and headed upstairs to the correct window and opened it, reaching out to begin pulling in the string of straws and taking them apart. _‘Don’t burn it. Just throw it out. It’s no big deal. No one will miss it.’_

Blue and red flower. Yellow star. Purple pony. And finally, his straw.

_‘Toss it!’_

Shooting Star tightened her hand around the end of the straw, toying with it for a second.

_‘Please?’_

Straightening up, she reared back like a pitcher and flung the straw out the window with all her strength, then rubbed at her hand in confusion.

Bill didn’t really stick around to watch the results of his mind-pushing, however, instead teleporting to see where his straw had landed. It had gotten hung on the branch of a bush, well out of any line of sight of the Shack, but still not in a great place to stay safe. He’d have to find a better spot for it, and a way to get it there. Ugh, looked like animal possession was going to have to be a thing.

But it was _his_.

It had been made for him.

The whole project had been made _for him_ , whether they knew it or not.

He’d really have to thank Shooting Star one of these days-

Bill started in surprise as his bow tie began ringing, and reached into himself to pull out the watch he’d set the journal alerts on.

_‘Then again,’_ he thought, mental fangs sharpening. _‘Scratch that.’_

  
The project had been a pleasant diversion, but it seemed his long game was back on.


End file.
